John McDonnell has graciously shared with readers of the Victorian Web his website with the electronic text, including scanned images, of the anonymous London Characters and the Humourous Side of London Life. With Upwards of 70 Illustrations apparently by a "Mr. Jones," which the London firm Stanley Rivers & Co. published in 1871. Brackets indicate explanatory material, such as interpretations of contemporary slang, by Mr. McDonnell. [Decorated initial "T" by Laurence Housman for one of his own books. — George P. Landow.]
he Thumbnail Sketcher will often find an amusing if
not a profitable occupation in attentively noticing the
peculiarities of almost any one person who happens to be
walking in his direction. It is astonishing how much of
a total stranger's tastes and habits may be learnt by
simply following him through half a mile of crowded
thoroughfare. You will find, perhaps, that he stops at
all print-shops; if so, he has a taste, good or bad, for art
in certain of its branches, and you can form an idea as to
the quality of that taste by taking note of the pictures
that principally arrest his attention. Is that the "Phryne
De'couverte" that he is admiring? Ah! I fear his taste
for art is not so immaculate as it should be. He is stopping
now at a fashionable perfumer's, and he is reading
an account of the marvellous deceptive powers of the
"Indistinguishable scalp,"---a fact that directs my attention
to so much of his hair as I can see below his hat-brim,
and I notice that it stands out unnaturally from
the nape of the neck. His next pause is at the shop of
an eminent Italian warehouseman, and as his eyes glisten
over pots of caviare, Lyons sausages, and pates de foie
gras, I conclude that he is a bon vivant. A pretty woman
passes him, and he makes a half-turn in her direction---a
sad dog, I'm afraid. Another and a prettier woman overtakes
him, and he hurries his pace that he may keep up
with her---a very sad dog, I'm sure. He passes the shop
of a flashy tailor, and gazes admiringly at a pair of trousers
that seem to scream aloud---so he must be a bit of a
"cad." Opticians' shops have no charms for him, so his
tastes do not take a scientific form; and as he passes a
window full of Aldines and Elzevirs, I suppose he is not
a ripe scholar. A glass case of grinning teeth pulls him
up, so I conclude that his powers of mastication are
giving way, and as he takes off his hat to a gentleman
who only touches his own in reply, I see that his social
position is not eminent. Playbills seem to possess an
extraordinary fascination for him, and he dawdles for half
an hour at a time over photographic Menkens and
Abingdons---he is evidently a patron of the drama in its more
objectionable forms. He crosses crowded thoroughfares
without hesitation, so he is a Londoner, and I see from
the fact that he stops to buy a "Bradshaw," that he is
going out of town. Another provision shop arrests his
attention, and I feel confirmed in the conclusion I have
arrived at that he is an epicure, practical or theoretical;
and as I eventually lose him in a cheap eating-house, I
render the latter alternative the more probable of the two.
Altogether I have seen enough of him to justify me in
determining that a personal acquaintance with him is not
an advantage which I would go through fire and water
to obtain.
It frequently happens, however, that a pretty accurate
notion of a man's habits and character may be arrived
at without taking all this trouble. A glance is often
sufficient to enable an observant Thumbnail Sketcher to
satisfy himself, at all events, on these points; and so
that he himself is satisfied, it matters little whether he
is right or wrong in his deductions. Here is a gentleman
about whom their can be no mistake. He is a Promoter
of Public Companies. He will, at ten days' notice, get
you up an association for any legitimate purpose you
may think fit, and a good many illegitimate ones into
the bargain. He is a specious, showy, flashily-dressed
knowing-looking gentleman, with a general knowledge of
most things, and an especial and particular acquaintance
with the manners and customs of fools in general. He
has served an apprenticeship in a good many excellent
schools. He was an attorney once, but he was young
then, and blundered, so they struck him off the rolls.
He afterwards jobbed on the Stock Exchange, but (being
still young) he misappropriated funds, and although he
was not prosecuted, he found it convenient to steer clear
of that commercial Tattersall's for the future. He then
became clerk to a general agent, and afterwards touted
for a respectable discounter. He made a little money at
this, and determined to give legitimate commerce a turn.
so he opened a mock auction, and sold massive silver
tea-services and chronometers of extraordinary value, all day
long, to two faded females and three dissipated Jewish
lads of seedy aspect but unlimited resources. The
district magistrates, however, took it upon themselves to
post policemen at his door to warn would-be customers
away, so he turned his hand to betting, and succeeded so
well that he soon found himself in a position to take a
higher stand. He got up a Company, with six other
influential Betters, for the supply of street-lamps to
Central Africa, showing in his prospectus, that where
street lamps were to be found, houses would soon be
gathered together, and houses, if gathered together in
sufficient numbers, formed important cities, a large
proportion of the revenues of which would, of course,
flow into the pockets of the public-spirited shareholders.
The "Central Africa Street Lamp Company (Limited)"
flourished for a short time only, but it enabled him to
form a connection by which he lives and flourishes. He
is very disinterested in all his undertakings: he never
cares to share in the profits of his Promotions---he is
good enough to leave them all to his shareholders. All
he wants is a sum down or a good bill at three months,
and the Company, once set a-going, will never be
troubled with him again. His varied experience has taught
him many useful lessons---and this among others, that
only fools take to illegitimate swindling.
Who is this dull and bilious man? He is a high-class
journalist and essayist, whose pride and boast it is
that he has never written for a penny paper. Being a
heavy and a lifeless writer, he entertains a withering
contempt for amusing literature of every description.
He takes the historical plays of Shakespeare under his
wing, and extends his pompous patronage to Sheridan
Knowles and all other deceased dramatists who wrote in
five acts, only he never goes to see their productions
played. Upon modern dramas of all kinds he is extremely
severe, and he lashes burlesque writers (when he
condescends to notice them) without mercy. He has
never been known to amuse anybody in the whole course
of his literary career, and would no more make a joke than
he would throw a summersault. In the early stages
of his career he made a comfortable income by writing
sermons for idle clergymen, and his facility for arguing
in circles, combined with a natural aptitude for grouping
his remarks under three heads and a "Lastly," made
him popular with his more orthodox customers, so he
always had plenty to do. He used to sell his sermons to
London clergymen as modern dramatic authors sell their
plays to London managers---reserving the "country
right" and farming them through the provinces, with
important pecuniary results. He is generally to be found
in the bar-parlours of solemn taverns, where he presides
as Sir Oracle over a group of heavy-headed but believing
tradesmen. He is a contributor to all religious magazines
of every denomination, and is usually regarded by his
intimate friends as a ripe, but wholly incomprehensible scholar.
Our next is an artist's model. He is a shocking old
scamp with a virtuous beard, and a general air of
the patriarch Moses gone to the bad. He was once a
trooper in a regiment of Life Guards, but he drank to such
an extent that he was requested to resign. In the course of
a period of enforced leisure he grew his beard, and as it
happened to grow Mosaically, he became popular with
artists of the high art school, and he found it worth his
while to let himself out for hire at per hour. Artists
are men of liberal souls, who don't care how much their
models may drink so that they don't come drunk into
the studio; but they are extremely particular upon this
latter point, and the patriarch does not always respect
their prejudices. So it often happens that his time is at
his disposal, and when this happens he engages himself
as a theatre supernumerary. He has been convicted of
dishonesty on two or three occasions, and was once sent
for trial and sentenced to penal servitude for three years.
He has a way of advertising himself by taking off his
hat and showing his forehead and hair (which are really
good) whenever he sees a gentleman in a velvet coat and
eccentric beard.
Then comes a gentleman whose source of income is a
standing wonder to all his friends. Nobody can tell how
he gets his living. Sometimes he is very flush of ready
money and sometimes he is hard up for half-a-crown.
His mode of life is altogether contradictory and
inconsistent. He lives in a small house in a fifth-rate square,
and his household consists of himself, a depressed wife,
five untidy children, and two maidservants. But, on the
other hand, he drives magnificent horses in irreproachable
phaetons, gives elaborate dinners, with all sorts of out-of-season
delicacies, has his stall at the Opera, and drives
to all races in a four-in-hand of his own hiring. Times
have been when the showy phaeton was returned to the
livery-stable keeper, and when Mr. Charles had orders to
send him no more salmon---when he and his family have
been known to feed on chops and rice pudding---when
his hall has entertained a succession of dunning [demanding
payment] tradesmen from nine in the morning till nine at night---and
when he himself had been seen outside omnibuses. But
these occasional periods of monetary depression have
passed away, and he has come out of them with renewed
splendour. A phaeton and pair (only not the same)
await his orders as before, and salmon at a guinea a
pound forms the least extravagant feature of his daily
meal. Now and then he disappears from his neighbourhood
for six months at a time, and his tradesmen are left
to tell the stories of their wrongs to the maidservant over
the area railings. But he turns up again, in course of
time, pays them off, and so gets fresh credit. Altogether
he is a social mystery. The only hypothesis that appears
to account for these phenomena is that he keeps a
gaming house.
Here is poor young Aldershot. He is very young
and very foolish, but he will grow older and wiser, and
his faults may be pardoned. On the strength of his [military]
commission, and a singularly slender allowance, he is
able to get credit for almost any amount, and what
wonder that he avails himself of the opportunity? The
great mistake of his life is that he does harmless things
to excess. He over eats, he over drinks, he over rides,
he over dances, he over smokes, and he over dresses.
He has no distinctive points beyond these---his other
qualifications are mostly negative. He is at present
simply a smoky donkey with a developed taste for mild
vice, a devoted faith in his autocratic tailor, and a
confirmed objection to the wedding tie. He will grow out
of all this, if he has the good luck to spend ten or fifteen
years in India, and he will return a big, burly, bronzed
captain with hair on his hands, and a breast like a
watch-maker's shop. The nonsense will have been
knocked out of him by that time, and his views on the
subject of matrimony will change.
The following gentleman has seen better days. He was
once a prizefighter and kept a public house upon which
he promised to thrive, but the police and the licensing
magistrates interfered, and one fine morning he found
his occupation gone. In point of fact his public house
(which was in Lant Street, Borough) became known as
a rendezvous for thieves of the worst class, and his
license was consequently suspended. His figure
developed too rapidly to allow of his following his other
calling with credit, so he had nothing for it but to
turn his hand to card-sharping and patter-business on
race-courses and at street corners. He is gifted with a
loud voice, an ad captandum manner, and a fluent
delivery, and in the assumed character of a gentleman who
has undertaken to dispose of a certain number of purses
with sovereigns in them for one shilling, in accordance
with the terms of a bet of ten thousand guineas made
between two sporting noblemen of acknowledged
celebrity, he manages to net a very decent livelihood.
The Thumbnail Sketcher's partiality for the London streets may be attributed, in a great measure, to the fact that, being a person of no consideration whatever elsewhere, he becomes, as soon as he places his foot upon the pavement, an autocrat invested with powers and privileges of the most despotic description. It is then in his power to inconvenience his fellow-man to an extent unknown in any other sphere of action, excepting perhaps a theatre. A man who goes forth in the morning with the determination of annoying as many people as possible during the day, without bringing himself within the pale of the law, has an exciting, and at the same time perfectly safe, career before him. It is then open to him to annoy hurried people by asking them the way to obscure or impossible addresses. He can call at and inspect all the apartments to be let upon his road; he may buy oranges (if that luscious fruit is in season) and scatter the peel broadcast on the pavement; he may, by quietly munching a strong onion, drive a crowd from a print-seller's window; and he can, at any time, reassemble one by disputing with a cabman on the matter of his fare. He may delay a street-full of busy people by stopping his Hansom in (say) Threadneedle Street; and he may, in half a dozen words, carefully selected, put the whole mechanism of the London police into operation. He may delay an omnibus-full of people by pretending to have dropped a sovereign in the straw, and if it is a wet day, he can spoil any lady's dress with his muddy boots or his wet umbrella. He can at any time, on a narrow pavement, drive well-dressed ladies into the roadway, a pastime popular enough with the politest nation in the world, but which has hardly yet acquired a recognized footing among coarse and brutal Englishmen. In short, he has it in his power to make himself an unmitigated nuisance with perfect impunity; and it is a creditable feature in his character that he does not often take advantage of his privilege. He is satisfied with the power vested in him, without caring to set its machinery in motion without due provocation.
The prerogative which I have here claimed for the Thumbnail Sketcher is not his alone; it is shared in a greater or less degree by all. Indeed the humbler and more filthy the passenger, the more marked are his privileges. The organ-grinder has it in his power to poison the atmosphere with his hideous and distracting music whenever he pleases; the costermonger and dustman may make morn hideous with their professional yells; German bands may bray wherever they choose, and Punch-and-Judy-men crow and chuckle in every street; while the wealthy and comparatively inoffensive bone-crusher, soap-boiler, knacker, or tanner is liable at any moment to be indicted as a nuisance if he happens to be in evil odour with his neighbors. The state of things is altogether an anomaly, but the humbler classes in whose favour it operates might surely be disposed to take the many benefits they derive from it as a set-off to the manhood suffrage which is not yet accorded to them. It may be taken indeed as a moral certainty that hardly a man walks into a London street without causing an inconvenience of greater or less magnitude to some of his fellow-passengers. But it is not the fashion to estimate moral certainties as physical certainties are estimated, and therefore people are allowed to walk abroad whenever they please without regard to the fearful annoyance that may be caused to a refined and sensitive organization by an outrageous hat, a taste for bad cigars, or a passion for peppermint drops. It is instructive, by the way, to contrast the utter irresponsibilty of a moral certainty with the absolute responsibility of a physical certainty. A certainty is a certainty, whether it be moral or physical; it is a moral certainty that in the course of the erection of (say) the new Law Courts at least a dozen people will be accidentally killed, yet nobody would dream of stopping the works on that account. But if it were possible to enter into an exceptional arrangement with Fate, by which the deliberate slaughter of one man before the first stone was laid would secure absolute immunity for the hundreds of others whose lives would otherwise be in daily peril during the eight or ten years which must elapse before the works are completed, society would protest with one voice against the inhuman compact, and the contractor who entered into it would be branded as a cold-blooded murderer. But from a politico-economical point of view he would be a conspicuous benefactor to his species.
The Thumbnail Sketcher, having now let off his superfluous steam, proposes once more to take the reader by the arm and direct his attention to half a dozen more of the involuntary models who unwittingly provided him with amusement and instruction whenever he takes his walks abroad.
Here is an amusing example of that bland, gentlemanly,
useful humbug the fourth-rate family doctor. Although
undoubtedly a humbug, he is not a quack. His professional
acquirements are quite up to the average mark, although
they seldom go beyond it. He has satisfied the College
of Surgeons and he has passed the Hall with decency; he
has even, perhaps, graduated an M.B. at London, and is
consequently styled Doctor by courtesy. But he is a
humbug for all that. He is not satisfied with the average
professional status to which his average professional
acquirements and average professional brain would, if
honestly worked, confine him; he soars high above this,
on the strength of a bland, impressive manner, an imposing
presence, and a certain quiet audacity in prescribing
eccentric but harmless remedies for fanciful complaints.
He is much too sensible a fellow to go beyond his depth,
but his depth is a tolerably deep one, and his plan of
elevating himself on moral tiptoes makes it appear
considerably deeper than it really is. As I said before, with
all his humbug and pretence he can, if he likes, be really
useful, and his waiting-room is daily thronged with real
or fanciful sufferers, who are quite justified in placing a
modest belief in him. Their mistake consists in believing
in him absolutely, on the mere strength of a bland,
impressive presence.
Who is this red-faced, white-haired, pompous old
gentleman who is holding forth in a window of the "Senior?"
He is an old officer who retired on half-pay forty years
ago, a humble, blundering captain, and who, by dint of
long standing, has worked his way up into the dignified
list of generals. When in active service he knew absolutely
nothing of his duty; he was the stock regimental
by-word whenever the subject of military incompetence
was broached. He was the scapegoat upon whose
shoulders the responsibility of all regimental blunders
was laid, and subalterns, six weeks old, would pose him
with impossible questions and record his oracular replies.
Now, however, that he has been cut off for forty years or
so from anything in the shape of practical experience in
military matters, and so has attained the rank of major-general,
he is looked upon as an important authority on the
organization of armies, and advanced strategy. He
is a county magistrate and a member of an important
borough, and his orations on Horse-Guards mismanagement
and military innovations, though little regarded in
the House, are looked upon by the outside public with a
respect which is born rather of his military rank than of
his military knowledge.
On next page stands an anomalous gentleman, one of a
group of four seedy but flashy individuals who are loafing
about the doors of a theatrical public-house in Bow Street.
He is an ex-equestrian, and the proprietor of a traveling
circus. A few years ago he was known as that daring
and graceful rider Annibale Corinski, whose "Courier of
the Dardanelles" on fourteen horses was justly celebrated
as the most thrilling performance ever witnessed in this
or any other country. But Annibale grew too fat for the
business, so he married the widow of his late employer
and set up as a circus proprietor on his own account. His
present position, as master of the ring, is one of qualified
dignity. It is true that, by virtue of his office, he is
entitled to appear in a braided military frock, jack-boots,
and a gold-lace cap; but he has, on the other hand, to
submit to nightly affronts from ill-conditioned jesters,
whose mildest insults take the form of riddles with offensive
answers, calculated to cover him publicly with confusion.
Here comes a tall, soldierly man in civilian clothes.
He is soldierly in his carriage, only he has no moustache,
and his little black eyes are quick and restless. He is
awake to most things, and his only delusion is that, being
a policeman in plain clothes, he looks like a prosperous
shopkeeper, a confidential clerk, a nobleman of easy
manners, or a country yokel in town for a "spree," according
to the characters which the peculiarities of his several
cases require him to assume. But the disguises are a failure.
The more he disguises himself the more he looks like a
policeman in plain clothes, and as long as he continues
in the force his official identity will assert itself.
Now appears a curious old bachelor of eccentric habits.
Nobody knows much about him, except a confidential
man-servant who effectually defeats any attempt to pump
him on the subject of his master's eccentricities. All that
is known of him is that he lives in a lodging-house in
Duke-street, St. James's. His valet is the only person
who is ever allowed to enter his room; his meals, carefully
but not expensively organised, are served with
extraodinary punctuality; he has a horror of children and
tobacco, and a nervous dread of Hansom cabs; he takes
a walk, between two and three every afternoon, round
St. James's Square, along Pall Mall, up St. James's
Street, and so home, stopping regularly at Sam's to look
at the profile pictures of distingished sporting and other
noblemen, and finishing up with a Bath bun and a glass
of cherry-brandy at the corner of Bond-street. He is
supposed by some to be a fraudulent banker, by others a
disgraced clergyman, by others an escaped convict of
desperate character, and by the more rational portion of
his observers as a harmless monomaniac. He never gives
his name, and his lodgings are taken for him by his valet.
There is a rumour afloat that he is a royal descendant of
Hannah Lightfoot, and that he is only waiting for an
opportunity to declare his rights and step at once into
the throne of England; but I believe that this theory is
confined to an imaginative and romantic few.
Here is one of those miserable ghosts that start up from
time to time in the London streets, to sicken the rich man
of his wealth and to disgust the happy man with his
happiness. If the wretched object before us could put his
thoughts into intelligible English, what a story of misery,
want, filth, sickness, and crime he could unfold! He is
of course a thief; who in his situation would not be? He
is a liar; but his lies are told for bread. He is a blasphemer;
God help him, what has he to be thankful for?
He is filthy in his person; but filth means warmth in
his vocabulary. He pushes his way insolently among
well-dressed women, who shrink from his infected rags;
why should he respect those whose only regard for him is
a feeling of undisguised aversion? He can tell you of
open-air places where there is snug lying; places where
you can sleep with tolerable comfort for nothing; he can
tell you all about the different houses of detection,
criminal gaols, police-cells, and tramp-wards in the
neighbourhood of the metropolis; and he can compare
their various merits and demerits, and strike a balance in
favour of this or that. He has been a thief since he
could walk, and he will be a thief till he dies---it is the
only trade that has ever been opened to him, and in his
case it has proved a poor one. Truly he is one of the
saddest sights in the London streets.
Last modified 24 November 2012